


Lodestone

by valderys



Series: Lodestone [1]
Category: Lost, Taggart - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: bdotp, Crossover, Double Drabble, Drabble Sequence, M/M, Monaboyd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-01
Updated: 2010-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 20:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valderys/pseuds/valderys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fuselage was where the bodies were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lodestone

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2004 for Bdotp's first drabblefest.

**1\. Buried Bodies**

The fuselage was where the bodies were. Charlie knew that. Didn't intend to go anywhere near it, although how you could just ignore the twisted torso of a bloody great plane wreck sat smack in the middle of the beach, was something he wasn't about to ask. He was used to things like that. Ignoring bloody great problems. He was a master at it.

It was the noise he couldn't ignore. There was a thread of sound coming from the fuselage, and no-one else seemed to notice. Or maybe they did. He wasn't the only one who could ignore things, after all.

It got to him. Even if he wandered off so he couldn't hear it, he still thought about it, thought about who it could be. But the fuselage was where the bodies were. His fingers itched under the plasters and he found he couldn't sit still.

He went, of course, in the end. He tried not to smell anything, and he tried not to look. Metal creaked alarmingly and the sun turned the plane's carcass into an oven, but he found him eventually. It was a boy in a weird yellow raincoat. Whimpering.

Clutching a dead woman's hand.

 

**2\. Shock**

Fuck, thought Charlie. He can't stay here.

It was blood heat inside the plane but dark and close after the brightness of the beach. Shadows loomed in the dimness, ghostly outlines that Charlie hoped were mostly torn away seating, but he didn't want to look too hard. The air was thick as syrup and he gulped a little, and then gagged, as the smell of decay curled into his mouth and choked him. He raised his arm to his lips and tried to breathe through his sleeve.

The raincoat stood out – a incongruously garish shape in the surrounding gloom. The boy had stopped whimpering, must surely be aware of Charlie, but he hadn't moved, hadn't even looked at him. In shock, Charlie thought. He moved forward, trying not to frighten him and began to reach. The boy flinched, and for one second wide startled eyes caught his own and darted away. Green, Charlie thought, bemused. Green as grass, green as marbles in a jar, like captured lightening. Christ.

The words he had been going to say lay curdled on his tongue, held there with the smile he felt dying from lack of light and air. He hadn't expected this. Electricity.

 

**3\. Holding on**

He wouldn't let go of her hand. The fingers were livid, Charlie could just see that, could see they were beginning to bloat, and turn as fat and red as sausages. He swallowed dryly, unhappy with the image. Unhappy with everything really. Except for the boy crouched in front of him, who Charlie found he couldn't be unhappy with, despite his silence, despite his imperceptible twitches, and his refusal to look at Charlie any more, so that it left him wondering if he really had seen what he thought he had seen in those glass green eyes.

He must let her go. She was dead. Undeniably dead. Surely the boy could see that? His holding on to her was sick. Sick but maybe understandable. Charlie didn't know, he was no doctor. Fleetingly, he thought, it should be Jack in here. Then a fiercely shocking protectiveness washed over him, and he clenched his fists. No, he'd been the one to hear him, he'd be the one to help him. His right. His find. His. Somehow.

So it therefore only distantly surprised him that there was no protest when he unwrapped the boy's fingers and led him quietly out of the plane.

 

**4\. Lodestone**

The boy was fine. Jack had said so. There was nothing physically wrong with him, but yet still he hadn't spoken. Not even when faced with the brilliant day, sunlight dazzlingly bright, waves blue and sparkling. Wreckage grey and scattered. It had made even Charlie blink, and he had only been inside for a few minutes. But Jack was busy, the moans of the Marshall had punctuated his examination of the boy, and dragged his attention away like iron filings to a magnet. In the end, Charlie was just glad to take him away.

He still wouldn't look at him though, and it made Charlie nervous. Some nameless existential fear, he felt himself attenuating down to nothing, slipping away between the first glance and the next. Insubstantial. But at least the boy was moving now. A stop-start hitched walk, down the beach and back, round the people, round the debris, but avoiding them, avoiding everything. Charlie followed, at a distance. Still fascinated. Still caught by that unexpected tug, like silver hooks under his heart. He remained anxious until he noticed the boy's perambulations took him near or far, but never away. Perpetually circling Charlie, he was compass to his lodestone.

 

**5\. Identities**

"Who is he?" asked Sayid, but Charlie could only shrug. The bright yellow plastic of the raincoat bobbed about on the beach as Charlie followed the boy's progress. He tore his eyes away and looked back at Sayid.

Dark eyes gazed solemnly back at him. Not green, but brown. Sayid cocked his head to one side and his lips quirked.

"He's really got to you, hasn't he?"

Charlie shrugged again, unwilling to articulate quite how he did feel, not sure he knew himself.

"Make sure he gets enough water. I haven't seen him drink."

Charlie nodded firmly, then Sayid clapped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. Bloody heroes, Charlie thought, even as the warmth of Sayid's palm seeped through to his skin, making him shiver. Knowing he would have fantasised about this just hours ago. That warmth. Those hands. Knowing that somehow, now, he couldn't.

Sayid turned away and Charlie watched him go, feeling a little wistful. A little horny. Then jumped to hear a lilting, liquid – Scottish? – voice, say all of a rush, "My name is Jamie, how are you, I'm fine, thanks very much."

Jamie. It surprised Charlie how very happy a simple name made him.

 

**6\. Responsibility**

Charlie watched Walt wander the edges of the beach looking for his dog. He looked disconsolate and sulky. Unhappy. Charlie thought about when he'd been a child and had a dog. He could just about remember how that felt, but the bright memories were scarred a bit by brighter ones since then; the splintering glare of spots from a stage, the pop and flash of cameras. The taste of brown sugar, cinnamon hot, flashing under his tongue.

When was the last time Charlie had felt responsible for anything as innocent as a dog? When was the last time anyone had expected him to be responsible at all?

He thought about offering to help Walt look then, the impulse flaring as hot in him suddenly as his fame once had. Charlie the Good Samaritan. And smiled to himself, cynical at his own quixotic notions. Instead he sat still, and drew his eyes back to Jamie who had crouched himself down nearby, not still, but quiescent. It seemed that with Charlie relaxed, he calmed too. Charlie had even caught a flash of green eyes now and again, like a beacon. No. Not now. Walt had Michael after all. Jamie only had Charlie.

 

**7\. Reflection**

The light was too bright. It hurt his eyes. Little slivers of glass digging and pricking into his eyeballs, like bits of mirror shattered from a Christmas bauble. Reflections showing a thousand different things, all of them painful. He felt raw, like someone had sandpapered his skin, and he realised he was tapping his ring again, twisting it round and round.

Fuck, Charlie thought. Fucking hell.

He stumbled to his feet, and pushed himself away to the fringes of the jungle, almost falling then, as the tremors began to shiver their way across his skin. Fuck.

He just needed a moment. Just a second really. The bag was in his hand before he even thought about it, and the grains of gold sparkled reprovingly at him as he carefully measured and sniffed the few he allowed himself.

How had he forgotten? How, even for a moment, could he have forgotten this particular demon? It wasn't like he could just ignore it and hope it went away. But he'd been thinking of other things, hadn't he? Other people. Fuck. Jamie.

Charlie looked up into the scattered light and flinched, just once, at the image painfully reflected in Jamie's wide open eyes.

 

**8\. Falling**

Why did he have to follow? Shit. Fuck. Charlie pushed himself to his feet in panic and stood staring. He blinked and the world shifted crazily. The bright yellow of Jamie's ridiculous raincoat flapped in the breeze, and Charlie flinched from the attack. Guilt burned him; it tasted of metal, smelt like chocolate. He licked his lips clumsily, feeling them too dry, his tongue too large for his mouth. It was too soon. Too soon after the hit. He couldn't. Just couldn't...

Green met yellow met brown. Went spinning. Chocolate was in his mouth, iron coating his lungs. He wanted to retch. The mould of the forest floor was beautiful, but sharp like a knife, he could see each tiny vein, on each translucent leaf. His hands scrabbled for purchase, sank into flesh, into cold carcasses and old blood, he was being buried alive. He gasped and breathed in dust, choked, and hugged corpses to his chest, scrabbling for solidity in the shifting landscape.

Then he felt warmth, burning hot, solid and real, and he clutched it like a drowning man. Fingers closed around his own and held him tight and safe, holding off the dark. And the world stilled.

 

**9\. Connection**

The buzzing in Charlie's ears had faded, and the colours of the world were finally returning to normal. He looked at the sunlight fracturing through the canopy and slowly breathed. A bad trip. The worst.

"Thanks," he said quietly.

The hand was still hot in his. That bloody raincoat, Charlie thought. He must be sweltering.

Jamie's skin was dry and soft, it slid a little in his grasp as Charlie turned, the feel of it sending prickles up his arm, to pool in his belly. He didn't let go.

"She held my hand. Sometimes. When I didn't understand. When I couldn't connect." The lilt was definitely Scottish. The hesitance seemed habitual. He didn't look at Charlie. She? Oh, the woman on the plane, maybe. Fuck.

"You weren't connecting either," Jamie continued slowly, "I thought..." Silence.

"You're right. I wasn't. It..." Charlie felt helpless. "It happens sometimes."

"You connected to me."

Yes, thought Charlie. I did. I do. I don't know why, but we do connect. On this bloody island, how did I get to be so fucking lucky? He squeezed the hand he held and then, greatly daring, tugged. They were both smiling when Jamie slid warm into his arms.


End file.
